Presumably, that explains the way he opened last night’s program. As he started, Chris Hayes said he was seething with anger:

HAYES (6/20/13): Good evening from New York. I’m Chris Hayes. Thank you for joining us.

Tonight on All In:

If you still possess the ability to be shocked by the rank corruption that crashed our economy, then you’re going to be shocked by the report Matt Taibbi of Rolling Stone has for us tonight. That is coming up.

Also, a shocking turn of events on the House floor as the House speaker brings crucial legislation to the floor and watches it go down in flames. I`ll tell you why what`s bad for John Boehner is good for the country.

Plus, taxpayer funded bailouts of struggling casinos? Now there is something that sounds totally ridiculous. But, yes, it is also something that is totally happening.

We begin tonight with a truly rare bit of genuine progress from Congress. Excellent news, in other words—excellent news that nonetheless has me seething with anger.

Here’s what’s happening that’s great news and infuriating.

Hayes promised that we would be shocked by Taibbi’s shocking report. Then he teased a shocking turn of events in the House.

Then, he teased a story about an action that is totally ridiculous. But he was going to start with a story which had him seething with anger.

“Here’s what`s happening that’s great news and infuriating,” he said.

To us, that didn’t sound like Hayes. It sounded like a new approach, designed by the suits to generate added excitement.

Those are speculations, of course. But as Hayes continued, we thought we saw the new game planning continue. It didn’t take long before he seemed to be showing off his new-seeming Maddow-style chops:

The bipartisan group of senators committed to making sure 11 million undocumented immigrants are given a road out of limbo and fear and toward citizenship is trying to pass a comprehensive bill by a huge margin in the Senate. That group of senators are called, annoyingly, the "Gang of Eight" and the reason they think they need the huge margin victory is to put pressure on House Speaker John Boehner to bring the legislation to the house floor even though it will almost certainly not have the support of a majority of House Republicans.

So that’s the game plan, right? The goal is get 70 votes in the Senate, a goal that has seemed, well, further away by the day lately. I mean, when one of the bill’s architects, Marco Rubio—I see you, Marco Rubio!—started openly flirting with killing it.

“I see you, Marco Rubio?” We’re going to call that a Maddow hook. But then, we think we’ve seen more and more Maddow hooks in Hayes’ delivery in the past week or so.

Obviously, there’s nothing wrong with trying to build ratings. Sometimes, though, this process can cause you to lose the essence of what you liked in the first place. When Hayes explained what had him seething, he didn’t really seem to be seething. Beyond that, we were even struck by the dumbness of his presentation.

In the beginning, people liked Hayes because he wasn’t dumb.

What has Chris Hayes seething with anger? The massive spending on border security that is being proposed to lure House Republicans into support of reform. As Hayes explained why this is infuriating, he made a presentation which struck us as very dumb:

HAYES: The price tag? Well, it’s all for a cool $30 billion, or more.

[...]

Now when you were evaluating—you right now watching this, the American voter, the American citizen, the American taxpayer—you’re thinking: Is this a smart way to spend money?

I would like you to keep in mind these two important things. The Migration Policy Institute, a nonpartisan think tank, found that in 2012 we spent $18 billion on immigration enforcement agencies, a 43 percent increase from 2006.

Here’s the kicker. That $18 billion, that’s more than we spent on all other law enforcement agencies combined by 24 percent.

And do you happen to know what the net migration between Mexico and the United States currently is? It is zero. Zero!

The most recent numbers show that from 2005 to 2010, the net migration is zero. A huge change from 1995 to 2000, the net migration from Mexico to the U.S. was more than 2 million people. But from 2005 to 2010, the number of people coming here from Mexico was about the same as the number of people going to Mexico from the U.S.

So we’re already spending almost $18 billion a year on a problem that does not exist. And Republicans in the Senate are poised to add $30 billion to that all over a handshake deal to win votes.

It will cost $30 billion over how many years? Hayes didn’t say.

But the part of that passage which struck us as dumb was the final highlighted claim—the claim that we are already spending $18 billion per year “on a problem that doesn’t exist.”

Please. Has the problem of unauthorized inflow actually ceased to exist? Any Republican would instantly say that the situation has improved because of that increased spending on enforcement—and they wouldn’t obviously be wrong. Meanwhile, the graphic behind Hayes as he spoke showed that illegal inflow is still quite high. The balance has improved because of the very large outflow of unauthorized residents from 2005 through 2010, presumably in reaction to the economic slowdown.

Hayes’ graphic still showed a lot of unauthorized inflow. Would anyone really buy the idea that the problem in question, at this time, “does not exist?”

Was Chris Hayes really seething with anger over that large spending proposal? Watching the tape, he didn’t seem to be seething with anger. And it seems to us that people like Hayes because he doesn't seethe.

The suits may have said that he has to seethe. If so, is that why people decided they liked Chris Hayes in the first place?

Hayes's position is remarkable. Supporters of the bill generally argue that it contains effective enforcement provisions that will substantially prevent illegal immigration going forward. Opponents generally argue that that the provisions of the bill are inadequate to effectively deter future illegal immigration. Some opponents, such a Rush Limbaugh, assert that Washington Doesn't Want to Stop Illegal Immigration.

P.S. Liberal pundit Mickey Kaus agrees with Limbaugh on this issue. I do too. There are steps that would substantially prevent illegal immigrants from being hire, receiving government benefits or attending college, etc. These steps are not being considered.

The quote below is from Wikipedia. Note that Kaus tends to support liberal ends and usually supports Democratic politicians. Those two points makes him a liberal rather than a conservative.

Kaus has identified himself as neoliberal.[citation needed] He tends to support liberal ends, including social equality (the topic of The End of Equality) and universal health care, but frequently attacks traditional liberal means of reaching those ends. Most notably, he was an influential proponent of welfare reform in the 1980s, and is a fierce critic of both labor unions (particularly automotive workers' unions and teachers' unions) and immigration reform (he supports the new Arizona anti-illegal-immigration law, calling to wait to see the law's practical effects before overturning it).[19][20]

Kaus' constant criticisms of traditional liberalism have prompted some liberals[21] (including his Bloggingheads sparring partner Robert Wright) to see him as a right-winger. He has been criticized for his persistent defense of his friend Ann Coulter from many liberal critics[22][23][24][25]

His views, and willingness to attack the Democratic Party, have also made him popular with conservative writers.[26][27]

Kaus usually supports Democratic politicians. During the 2008 presidential campaign, Kaus endorsed Hillary Clinton for president, while criticizing other Democrats including Barack Obama. In the 2006 U.S. Midterm Elections Kaus wrote that he hoped the Democrats would fail to take over the U.S. House of Representatives but take the Senate. He called the election "perverse" because he saw a Democratic victory as not impeding George W. Bush's Iraq policy but helping his immigration policy. Nevertheless, Kaus declared he still voted for Democrat Jane Harman.

"His views, and willingness to attack the Democratic Party, have also made him popular with conservative writers."

This hardly makes it honest to cite Kaus as a "liberal pundit" when trying to play the "even the liberal" game, does it? But as a disgusting, shit eating troll, all you care about is trolling, not honesty. Hope you enjoy your plate of shit today. Have a second helping, in fact. You've earned it.

If you think Dave's posts are bad, just imagine how his wife feels when he lets out a belch after a particularly gluttonous session at the dinner table.

"David, I've asked you and asked you not to burp at the table. And at least cover your mouth, the brown spots on your teeth are even worse than the smell. And don't even think of using my toothbrush 'by mistake' again, go buy your own."

Do the Tyson Chickens and other Fortune 1000 companies which depend on illegal immigration for cheap labor know Limbaugh is double-crossing them? Fortune 1000 vs the head of the Republican Party. Make it a death match and butter the popcorn. Now THAT'S entertainment!

As I've been telling you for years Bob, these people do what they do because that's what their audience wants. You said it yourself: Hayes got miserable ratings trying to play it straight. He can either get chased off the air being "smart," or he can get down in the slop and oink like the rest of the pigs. He chose to oink in the shitty, but nourishing, muck, as pretty much anyone would. The ability of these people to set the rules is quite limited, and the boundaries aren't set by "the suits," as you call them, but the people who demand to be "shocked" and "infuriated" and made to "seethe with anger." We're dragging ourselves down, we aren't being drug down -- certainly not by the likes of Hayes and Maddow.

I've only watched Hayes sporadically in his new show, but my impression is the same as Bob's. He used to have a smart 2 hour show where knowledgeable people you didn't always see on other cable shows got to have extended conversations on serious issues. He made mistakes, but it was much, much better than anything else on cable news, at least from what I've seen.

The new show is, as Bob says, where Hayes has become shallow and superficial like Maddow. A real disappointment, though not unexpected. Maybe the network doesn't think there's an audience for intelligent discussion on weekday evenings.

A bedrock requirement for an effective TV anchor - for an effective speaker in any line of work - is clarity. Much of what Hayes says is lost to a rapidity of speech that renders words, thoughts, descriptions, etc. incomprehensible. Apart from that, Hayes is not a fluent reader of the prompter; he stumbles over words to the extent that you wonder if networks still hold auditions for voice talent. His delivery resembles that of the Valley Girl with sentences ending on a rising tone as if they were questions or evidence of uncertainty. The delivery of cable presenters with but few exceptions is bizarre, scarcely resembling the speech of ordinary persons, and resembling that of highly-paid narrators and voice-over artists not at all. And, as noted above, his arm-waving, worse even than Maddow's, seems a consequence of a serious ailment, perhaps ataxia.